Musk—whose portfolio includes electric car company Tesla, private space company SpaceX, and the social media platform Twitter—has been in and out of the No. 1 spot on the Bloomberg index in recent years. His leading competitor in recent months has been luxury goods tycoon Bernard Arnault, founder and CEO of LVMH, a conglomerate representing dozens of luxury brands, including Louis Vuitton and Dior.
Much of the decline in his wealth last year came as he shifted attention away from his largest asset, Tesla, and toward his purchase of Twitter. The electric car company lost nearly half its market value and Musk lost about $70 billion between April 2022 and November 2022 as he moved to acquire and revamp Twitter.
Musk’s overall net worth improved this year following a rebound in Tesla stock. Shares in the electric car company have rallied 66 percent and Musk’s assets have gained $55.3 billion in value this year.
Twitter’s Value and Future
Musk has sunk a large portion of both his attention and his net worth into acquiring Twitter. In October 2022, as he closed in on the $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, Musk acknowledged that he felt he was overpaying but said he still saw untapped potential for the social media platform.“I think it’s an asset that has just sort of languished for a long time but has incredible potential, although obviously myself and the other investors are overpaying for Twitter right now,” he said.
This week, Fidelity revised the market value of its ownership stake in Twitter down to just one-third of what it was when Musk took over the platform, suggesting that the company’s overall value had fallen by two-thirds since October 2022.
While Twitter began as a microblogging site where users shared their thoughts and provided updates about personal events or developing news stories, He has suggested that Twitter could eventually provide a far broader set of features. He has repeatedly compared his plans for Twitter to the popular Chinese app WeChat, which allows for text messaging, voice messaging, broadcasting, video conferencing, mobile gaming, and mobile payments.